


Presence of Absence

by atamascolily



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: New Republic Era - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Force Training, Fun and Games, Gen, Jedi Training, Ysalamiri (Star Wars), the Solo children being adorable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 08:22:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14040138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily
Summary: For the Solo children, hide and seek with Uncle Luke is more than a game - it's also an excellent opportunity for Jedi training. Even if they are rather curious about his love life.





	Presence of Absence

**Author's Note:**

> So this fic takes place in 17 ABY, post- _New Rebellion_ and the Black Fleet Crisis, but before the Hand of Thrawn duology. (17 ABY was one hell of a year for everyone in the Legends canon, it seems.) Winter's married to Tycho, but still caretaking the Solo children. I've given up trying to shoehorn the exact chronology for this fic and decided to just roll with it. Feel free to consider it AU if I got the details wrong. 
> 
> Also, I don't think the Solo children consider Karrde and Mara part of their extended family in canon - at least, pre-Hand of Thrawn - but it's so cute, and it makes me happy, so I'm going with it.

Winter brought the children over to Luke's apartment after lunch, and the twins were bursting with energy. "Uncle Luke! Uncle Luke! Uncle Luke!" eight-year-old Jacen and Jaina shouted as they rushed him, each wrapping their arms around one of his legs and refusing to let go, even as Luke pretended to be overwhelmed by the onslaught. 

"Oh, no! Parasites!" he shouted, swaying to and fro in a mock attempt to dislodge his niece and nephew as they giggled and clung even harder. "Whatever shall I do? Oh, no, perhaps if I shake my arms and legs like a tree--a very angry tree--one that doesn't like stowaways--" 

While Luke growled at the twins and shook his limbs mock-ineffectually, Anakin hung back shyly, still clutching Winter's hand. Only after Luke had succeeded at untangling the twins and sent them careening to the floor - everyone laughing hysterically the whole time - did Anakin come forward to greet his uncle with a tentative smile. "Hi, Uncle Luke." 

"Hi, Anakin," Luke said, bending down to embrace his youngest nephew. "How are you doing today?" 

Anakin thought for a moment, taking the time to answer the routine question seriously. "I'm okay. Are we going to play games today?" 

Luke had found that answering questions with more questions worked equally well with Leia's children and his own Jedi students. "Do you _want_ to play games?"

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" Jaina interjected, leaping to her feet. Jacen wasn't far behind. "We want to play hide and seek!" they said in chorus. 

Luke smiled. "All right, we can arrange that. Jacen, you know where the blast helmets are, right? Why don't you and Jaina fetch three of them for us?" 

With a shout, the twins bustled off to the closet next to the kitchen, which Luke had filled with training equipment. He didn't usually teach students in his personal apartments here on Coruscant, especially now that the Yavin academy was up and running. But he'd found it never hurt to have a few things on hand, just in case, and it made any rounds of babysitting his niece and nephews much easier.

"Long day, huh?" Luke said to Winter, who was retying the little wisps of white hair that had slipped out of the complicated Alderaanian braid crowning her head. 

"You could say that," Winter said with a wry smile. Somehow she managed to look regal and serene even when she was exhausted - a talent he knew Leia envied. "The twins don't ever seem to want to stop these days. They definitely need an outlet for all that energy." 

"Well, I'm sure we can figure something out," Luke said. "You'll be back before dinner, right?" 

Winter nodded. "Of course. It'll be just for a few hours. I know you have a lot going on, but with Han and Leia both away on business, it's nice to have a break for a while - and Threepio can only handle so much, especially with the twins so rambunctious these days. I really appreciate this." 

Luke laughed. "No problem. Kids grow up so fast, and I've been pretty busy, too. It'll be nice to spend an afternoon together and catch up. Give my best to Tycho, would you?"

He winked as Winter flushed. "Go on, go have fun," he told her, waving her away. "We certainly will!" 

As Winter left, Jacen and Jaina came running in with the blast helmets tucked under their arms. "Okay, I'm not 'it'!" Jacen shouted.

"Not 'it'!" Jaina and Anakin chorused a few seconds later.

"Okay, okay, I'll be 'it' for starters," Luke said, taking a helmet from Jacen and pulling it down over his head so he couldn't see anything. "One, two, three...." 

Luke wasn't 'it' for long. He was skilled enough with the Force to know where each of the children were without having to use his eyes - which was the whole point of the game. Before long, all three of them were 'it,' trying to catch Luke. He looped in wide circles around the room, easily dodging the three children, who were giggling even as they stumbled into each other, arms outstretched in a fruitless effort to find him. It was hard not to laugh, though that would have given the game away. 

Eventually, Jacen managed to catch Luke -- and it wasn't by chance. "I found you!" he shouted in triumph, as he yanked the blast helmet off his head. 

"Good," said Luke. "How'd you do it? Were you just guessing?" 

"No! I could _feel_ you somehow--" 

Luke took Jacen's place with the helmet and now Jacen was "it". Luke deliberately slowed his pace and avoided his nephew to allow Anakin and Jaina a chance to use their skills. After about fifteen more minutes - during which the children's accuracy showed definitive improvement - they began to tire of the game. "This is too easy!" Jaina complained after she tagged both her brothers in quick succession. 

"I'm glad you think that," Luke said. "Let's make it more challenging, then." 

He went to his room, where a backpack nutrient frame was leaning against the far wall. Clinging tightly to one side of the frame was a large, dull-green lizard, which blinked sleepily as Luke approached.

He'd gotten this from Karrde, of course, in the aftermath of another unpleasant showdown with a former student turning to the Dark Side. The smuggler had considered it it an odd request for a Jedi, but had been happy to supply Luke with everything he needed - for the right price, of course. 

As a training tool, however, this was one invaluable. He was so used to the effects he barely even flinched now. 

The lizard grudgingly let Luke peel its feet away from the frame, and lumbered up his arm and onto his shoulders, where it dozed off again. He wore it draped over his shoulders back into the living room where his charges were waiting. 

"Hey! a lizard! Neat!" said Jacen. 

"What's that?" Anakin wanted to know. 

"No fair! You just disappeared!" Jaina said, stamping her foot. "How did you do it?" 

Luke bit his lip to keep from smiling. "This is a ysalamir," he said, pointing to the lizard. "They're native to the planet Myrkr." 

"That's where Uncle Karrde lived!" Jacen said. "But how come I can't feel you anymore?"

"On Myrkr, there are fierce predators called vornskrs that use the Force to hunt. That's the same method that you're using to find me when you have the blast helmet on and can't see anything. The ysalamiri don't want to be eaten, so they interfere the ability of the beings around them to perceive the Force - to hide so that the vornskrs can't find them." 

Anakin considered this for a minute, clearly puzzled by something. "Wouldn't it be easy for the vornskrs to find 'em by looking for the absent places?" he said at last. 

"That's right!" Luke said, although he'd never really thought of it in quite that way before. "We're going to do something like that right now. I'm going to hold the ysalamir and you three are going to try to look for the place where you can't feel the Force, and move towards it."

"That doesn't sound so hard," Jacen said as the children gamely put their helmets back on. 

But it was clear to Luke after a few minutes that it was actually quite difficult. 

Eventually Jaina tagged him, although she was confused and disoriented and it was as much luck as it was skill. "I can't feel _anything_ when I'm near the lizard," she said as she took her helmet off, biting her lip. "I don't like it." 

Luke shifted the ysalamir so he could pat her shoulder without dislodging his burden. "It's okay, Jaina. It's normal to feel bewildered when the Force disappears like that. When I went to Myrkr for the first time, I couldn't believe what was happening."

"Myrkr's where you met Aunt Mara!" 

"Ye-es," Luke said, curious to see where this was going. He didn't see Mara much these days - but apparently she popped in to the Organa-Solo household enough for the children to speak affectionately of her, the same way they did for Karrde. He'd never thought of her as someone who was good with kids, though. Clearly, there were many sides to Mara he'd never seen before. 

Leia liked her. Luke vaguely remembered her mentioning that she and Mara would have tea together when Mara's business brought her to Coruscant. Maybe that was how the children knew her so well. 

"That's right," Luke said. "We did." Strictly speaking, he'd met Mara when she'd pulled his damaged X-wing out of deep space, and she and Karrde had brought him to Myrkr as a prisoner shorly thereafterward, but it was hard to figure out how to explain that without going into too many unncessary details. 

"Are you going to marry Aunt Mara?" Anakin asked. 

Fortunately, he managed to catch his surprise in time so that the children didn't pick it up. "I haven't asked," he said as affably as he could, trying to keep his tone light. "She might not be interested." 

"Oh," said Jacen, clearly unable to fathom the inscrutable ways of grown-ups. 

"What makes you think she wants to marry me?" Luke asked him. 

"Papa says that when she met you, she wasn't sure whether she liked you or whether she was going to kill you. Papa says he felt the same way about Mama when he met _her_ , too." 

Luke opened his mouth to object -- and then remembered that day on the first Death Star and closed it again. That was a pretty accurate summary of Han and Leia's first meeting, all right. 

But that didn't mean that he and Mara--

"Okay, let's take turns holding the ysalamir while we keep playing," Luke said, deciding to regroup. "Be gentle with him, okay?" 

"His skin's all pebbly and rough," said Jaina as she passed the lizard over to Jacen. "I like that, but I don't like not being able to feel the Force. It's very lonely. I can't sense you or Jacen or Anakin or _anybody_." 

"I agree," Luke said. "It is very lonely. But it's good that you know what it feels like now so you won't be surprised later if it happens again in the future." Thrawn had frequently used ysalamiri to set traps for him and Mara, forcing them to rely on their other talents. Given how often the Solo children were under threat, it was good to prepare them for any and all eventualities.

Besides, training with them was fun, in a bizarre sort of way. And it helped prepare him for teaching this and similar exercises to his older students at the Academy, too. 

_Maybe it was a mistake to only take older students. Yoda certainly didn't want to take me, and I can see his point. I was stubborn and reckless and hell to work with. Certainly some of my students have caused no end of trouble!_ There was that unfortunate business with Kyp Durron and the Sun Crusher, after all, not to mention Brakiss and Gantoris. He winced at the thought. 

_But I think it's important to let children be children - to let them have lives and families of their own, so that they can CHOOSE the life of a Jedi for their own and know what it is they're really choosing._

_And I'd rather be uncle to Leia's children than a Jedi master right now, anyway._ There was plenty of time for that when they were older. And perhaps by then there would be other teachers, too--

"That's why we want to develop our other skills, too, instead of relying on the Force for everything," Luke continued, not yet done with the lesson. "Because there may be times when we can't feel the Force, and other people may still need our help." 

"That makes sense," Anakin said, nodding with that same slow, steady seriousness. 

"Anakin, it's your turn to hold Mr. Pebbles," Jacen announced, passing off the lizard to his brother. "I'm tired of being 'it'." 

"Why's he called Mr. Pebbles?" 

"Because I said so." 

"No fair!" Jaina shouted. "I wanted to name him--" 

"Let's play another round," Luke interjected, hoping to forestall a long and pointless argument. "Anakin's holding the ysalamir right now, so Jacen, you and Jaina and I will all try to find him with our helmets on--" 

By the time dinner rolled around, and Winter had come to collect her charges, their accuracy was improving, but it was still a very challenging task for all of them, Luke included.

Winter was pleased to see that Anakin was yawning and looking tired, and even the twins' usual energy was beginning to flag. "I trust you all had fun?" she said to Luke.

" _I_ certainly did," he told her. "What do you think, everyone? Is this something we should do again?" 

"Yeah! Yeah!" the twins chanted. 

"I want to keep playing," Anakin agreed.

"Well, we'll play again next time you come over," Luke said, collecting Mr. Pebbles from his youngest nephew (Jacen's name had stuck after all) and temporarily perching the ysalamir back on his shoulders. "Now it's time to put your blast helmets away and get ready for dinner." 

It took a few minutes for the children to clean up and depart, with lots of hugs all around for everyone. "Let me know when you want to do this again," Winter said to him before she hustled them out the door. 

Luke nodded, and waved at everyone until they were out of sight. Then he went and put Mr. Pebbles back into his nutrient frame. As he stepped away, his Force senses flickered back on and he was acutely aware of his surroundings again. 

"Look for the absent places," he said thoughtfully, recalling Anakin's observation. There was a large hole in the Force around the nutrient frame, and he could approximate its size and location by noting where his Force sense abruptly stopped. Perhaps there was some way to put this idea into practical use, so that if he ever found himself back on Myrkr again--

Why, oh why, had the children thought he was going to marry Mara? It was absurd. Totally and completely absurd. She just wasn't interested in him like that. He imagined the look on her face if the children ever asked _her_ that question--

As tempting as it would be to tease her about it, he'd spent a long time persuading Mara Jade not to kill him. It would be a shame if their prickly friendship was marred by unnecessary violence just because he couldn't keep his mouth shut. 

Still, he'd pay quite a bit of money to be a fly on the wall the next time that topic came up at the Organa-Solo household when Mara was there...


End file.
